PCCM – Doomed Miners' Day in Court

As many of you will have seen on Facebook, this year’s Extension Miners Memorial service, Ladysmith’s “annual tribute to the 32 miners whose lives were lost in a tragic explosion on Oct. 5, 1909,” was held this week in front of the Metal Collage on the corner of First Avenue and Gatacre Street.

But, to my knowledge, there never has been a latter-day memorial service for the lost men of the Pacific Coast Coal Mines colliery operation at South Wellington.

Today, it’s a farmer’s field, the right-of-way for a gas line, and third-growth trees intersected by the E&N mainline. Other than a concrete tower-like structure in the middle of a pasture, some concrete foundations of the powerhouse in the trees, and evidences of scattered and mounded coal waste, the once famous—perhaps infamous--PCC Mine has all but vanished.

Nothing to even suggest that this was a busy coal mine. Nothing to suggest that that here, 106 years ago, 100s of feet below the surface, 19 men were drowned.

Their deaths should never have happened, were totally preventable. Their families’ sole consolation was that, for one of the very few times in the history of the Island coal industry, some of the principles involved were charged with criminal negligence.

The story of the PCC Mine is a sad but a fascinating one, as I’m sure you’ll agree when you read next week’s Chronicles.

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